By now everyone knows Trump looked to the sky and said “I am the chosen one” and also retweeted someone who called him the king of Israel.
God, Jesus, the chosen one, you say tomato I say tomatoe.
Wikipedia describes God complex this way:
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks. The person is also highly dogmatic in their views, meaning the person speaks of their personal opinions as though they were unquestionably correct. Someone with a god complex may exhibit no regard for the conventions and demands of society, and may request special consideration or privileges.
Both God complex and malignant narcissism never made it into a DSM so they have that in common.
Additionally, what God complex has in common with malignant narcissism is that they were both first described by eminent thinkers and theoreticians in the history of psychology. Erich Fromm and Otto Kernberg formulated malignant narcissism. The first person to use the term god-complex was another icon of psychology Ernest Jones (1913–51).
Jones was one of the early psychoanalysts and was a lifelong friend of Sigmund Freud and his official biographer. He wrote the classic Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis. He described the god complex as belief that one is a god.
There is a major difference between believing one is actually God, capital G God or Jesus, and having a more amorphous belief that one is god-like. Kind-of-sort-of God but not really “that” God.
While you can check off every characteristic of the god complex and see it applies to Trump, as a therapist I wouldn’t rule out that there are times when even though I am convinced he is an atheist he has the thought or feeling (or both) that maybe there is a God and he is the chosen one.
This is a delusion. People who believe this with absolute conviction are likely to be schizophrenic. For example, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (1964) is a book-length psychiatric case study by Milton Rokeach (he taught at Michigan State and I was friends with his wife). He conducted an experiment on a group of three paranoid schizophrenics at Ypsilanti State Hospital[1] in Michigan. His book detailed the interactions of the three patients who each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. (Wikipedia)
Regardless of what Donald Trump really believes about himself, and we’re unlikely to ever know, one thing you can say, to use a bit of Yiddish, is that coming after his wanting to buy Greenland and having a hissy fit when he was rebuffed by a “nasty woman” and then his schtick about his own divinity represents the height of meshuggeneh chutzpah.
Almost everyone know chutzpa means audacity, many know meshuggeneh means crazy.
On the subject of Yiddish, I’m not exactly sure where Trump’s saying that any Jew who votes Democratic is uniformed or disloyal fits in with his being meshuggeneh but it certainly demonstrates chutzpa, although it is politically reckless.
Snark Break:
There’s one DSM diagnosis Trump doesn’t show any signs of having. What a relief if would be if he came down with symptoms of this.
Yesterday my story was in response to Trump’s wanting to buy Greenland and his tantrum over being rebuffed by a “nasty woman.”
Thursday, Aug 22, 2019 · 3:02:26 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
President Trump on Aug. 21 again defended his trade war with China and downplayed fears of a recession. (The Washington Post)
The Amazon is burning. Darkness covers São Paulo at noon. The economy is wilting. The Federal Reserve chair dreamed of seven lean oxen, and when he awakened, all his yield curves had inverted. Sean Spicer is on “Dancing With The Stars.” Do not think that these are signs that we drift, alone, through an indifferent universe, where everything is absurd and nothing is funny. Do not mistake these omens. All has been revealed.
*stone tablets containing decades of laws crash down from on high and shatter*
Glorious news, everyone! Donald Trump is God! Everything makes sense now, and the final purpose of all things is at last clear. Donald Trump on Wednesday proudly quoted a messenger who said he was “the second coming of God,” and he described himself as “the chosen one,” looking up at the sky. As I said, wonderful, good, normal news!
*Donald Trump’s entire staff transforms into snakes*
Listen to the video and the reporter who clearly and wonderfully catches on and shouts out “do you believe you are the second coming of God?”